August 2024
A new study posits that quantum entanglement may occur in the myelin covering of nerve cells in the brain and thus create consciousness, but neither the scientists nor the media covering the hypothesis have considered evidence that consciousness emerges outside the brain. This is a prime example of how the latest evidence for non-local consciousness is misunderstood — or ignored — by mainstream science and media.
The study, published in scientific journal Physical Review E, suggests consciousness emerges from quantum entanglement processes, and that myelin, a fatty material that surrounds the nerve cells’ axons (fibers transmitting signals), provides the right environment for photon entanglement to occur. This new hypothesis by Shanghai scientists Zefei Liu, Yong-Cong Chen, and Ping Ao relates to Sir Roger Penrose’s and Stuart Hameroff’s orchestrated objective reduction theory (‘Orch OR’).
However, the scientists do not explain why this entanglement of quantum particles would take place within the physical confines of the human brain. It is well known that quantum entanglement knows neither distance nor time, which creates the possibility that consciousness is non-local.
That fact is not addressed in the study nor in the media coverage that followed.
Popular Mechanics magazine presents the new study with the headline “Quantum Entanglement in Your Brain Is What Generates Consciousness, Radical study suggests”.
New Scientist writes how firing millions of neurons simultaneously requires distant cells to coordinate their timing, which “has led some researchers to wonder if this coordination could be due to what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’”.
Some fact-checking is in order: Einstein’s remark alluded to the fact that the ‘spooky action’ can occur at the far end of the universe, not merely at the far end of a brain.
The Chinese team’s starting point looks conventionally materialist. The assumption is that consciousness must somehow be produced in the brain. “Consciousness within the brain hinges on the synchronized activities of millions of neurons”, the paper reads.
The study does not address the “hard problem of consciousness”, the fact that nobody has been able to satisfactorily explain how brain activity is connected to awareness, sentience or any subjective experience.
If quantum entanglement processes are associated with human consciousness, those processes would represent what being conscious “looks like from the outside”, not what causes it to emerge.
The press has a responsibility to account for all known possibilities. In this case, to weigh in the substantial body of science indicating that consciousness is nonphysical.
Anders Bolling
